Accountability and governance in municipal corporations: insights from negotiated order theory

Public sector organizations, particularly municipal corporations (MCs), operate within increasingly intricate governance frameworks shaped by multiple actors, competing values, and evolving institutional pressures. These entities sit at the intersection of formal structures and informal negotiations, where diverse stakeholder interests and institutional logics collide, creating ongoing challenges for effective management and accountability. These organizations are not only tasked with implementing public policy but also navigating a web of relationships and expectations from multiple stakeholders. As such, the governance and accountability structures within these entities are crucial for ensuring they fulfill their mandates transparently and effectively.

MCs are tasked with delivering public services while adhering to the principles of efficiency, accountability, and performance. Heavily influenced by New Public Management, which emphasizes efficiency and performance measurement, many municipalities worldwide, particularly in countries like Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, have increasingly utilized MCs for service provision (Argento et al., 2010; Florio and Fecher, 2011; Grossi and Reichard, 2008; Wollman et al., 2010). Furthermore, in recent years a trend towards re-municipalization has been observed, with increasingly more reliance on MCs (Voorn et al., 2021). These developments have sparked growing scholarly interest in how institutional logics, governance arrangements, and accountability practices are negotiated and sustained within these hybrid organizations (Argento et al., 2016; Grossi et al., 2015; Klijn and Koppenjan, 2000; Maine, 2025; Sorensen and Torfing, 2009). In the literature, governance and accountability are often treated as distinct yet deeply interrelated concepts. Governance refers to the structures, norms, and processes through which organizations are directed and controlled, encompassing both formal frameworks and informal negotiated arrangements (Erlingsson et al., 2018; Grossi and Thomasson, 2015). Accountability, meanwhile, addresses the relationships through which organizational actors are held responsible by others — a dynamic that is often framed as “who is accountable for what and to whom” (Agostino et al., 2022; Grossi et al., 2020). Governance frameworks and accountability mechanisms are continually shaped through interactions among actors with competing expectations and logics (Grossi et al., 2021), necessitating exploration of the interactions and processes among the actors involved (Ebrahim et al., 2014).

MCs often benefit from greater autonomy and flexibility compared to traditional local bureaucracies (Bel and Fageda, 2006; Garrone et al., 2013). This allows them to operate with fewer political constraints, and in some cases, to collaborate with private sector partners, leading to more efficient service provision in areas like refuse collection, water distribution, and transit services (Bognetti and Robotti, 2007; Da Cruz and Marques, 2011; Herrala and Haapasalo, 2012). Differences in legal frameworks, financial scrutiny, and managerial discretion between MCs and local bureaucracies are key factors influencing their effectiveness (Bel et al., 2010; Tavares and Camões, 2007; Voorn et al., 2017).

However, MCs face challenges related to governance and accountability. They must navigate the conflicting demands of economic efficiency, equity, accountability, and community service (Grossi and Reichard, 2008). The “clear divisions between oversight and execution of tasks, straightforward criteria and measurements for performance, and a logical hierarchy between agents and principals” (Schillemans and Bovens, 2011, p. 3) are becoming more blurred with these conflicted goals pursued at the same time, leading to calls to discuss “publicness” in accounting research (Steccolini, 2019). MCs can face collective action problems such as conflicts over objectives and insufficient monitoring (Feiock, 2009, 2013; Voorn et al., 2019). These challenges arise across various forms of inter-municipal cooperation and public-private partnerships (Garrone et al., 2013; Bognetti and Robotti, 2007) adding layers of complexity for accountability and governance. Furthermore, MCs run the risk of creating corruption in the public sector by diminishing competition and eroding transparency and creating legal ambiguities (Erlingsson et al., 2008; Bergh and Erlingsson, 2023). Complicating matters, the political nature of municipalities can have an impact: ideological and political concerns can impact the operation of the MCs (Tavares and Camöes, 2007; Andrews et al., 2020). For example, Capolbo et al. (2021) reports that election periods often lead to an increase in reported income for MCs, thus potentially highlighting the lack of independence of MC and ruling political powers noted by Ferreira da Cruz and Marques (2011), whereas Valkama et al. (2022) claims that MCs can result in diminished democratic representation. The move towards a more hybrid governance thus raises issues related to accountability and control (Wiesel and Modell, 2014).

In recent literature, several theories have been used to investigate the accountability and governance of MCs. Among these, institutional theory, and particularly institutional logics, has been influential (see: Maine, 2025). This perspective has been used to explore board behavior (Smith et al., 2023), to competing logics in service delivery (Argento et al., 2016), tensions in financial and social accountability (Maine et al., 2024). As Olsen et al. (2017) emphasize, institutional logics exists on the macro level and are “macro-level societal constructions that shape organizational fields and organizations and influence identities and behavior of groups and individuals at the micro-level” (Olsen et al., 2017, p. 393) and institutional logics perspective has significantly advanced our understanding of how overarching societal values and norms filter down to affect decision-making and organizational behavior within MCs.

However, the challenges related to accountability and governance are often more complex than just macro constructions shaping meso and micro levels. Scholars have highlighted the reciprocal relationship between formal structures and institutional logics, where structural separation can reinforce cultural and identity divides between key actors, amplifying tensions between principals (municipalities) and agents (MCs) (Berge and Torsteinsen, 2023). Indeed, accountability and governance issues are impacted by factors that are “embedded in individuals (roles and identities), in groups (the combinations of autonomy and control), in corporations (the incorporation of multiple values, like economic and social values), in broader organizational fields (like the combination of public and private sector, or private and nonprofit sector) and societal considerations” (Grossi et al., 2024, p. 2), and thus citizens, other MCs and customers should be considered when discussing MCs (Nieukoop, 2023). While financial values and logics seem to be prioritized in MCs (Alexius and Örnberg, 2015), multiple values and logics operate at the same time (Argento et al., 2016; Berge and Torsteinsen, 2023; Wiesel and Modell, 2014) underscoring the need to move beyond static, top-down approaches to governance and accountability by accounting for the fluid, negotiated, and multi-dimensional nature of these interactions. In short, accounting and governance are contingent, context-dependent, and often negotiated in real time by actors with different histories, roles, and stakes in the process. These dynamics are not easily captured by top-down institutional models alone. Therefore, a complementary perspective is needed — one that highlights how governance and accountability are enacted and reshaped through interaction and negotiation.

While formal governance, such as board composition and contractual relationships are important, MCs represent problems related to interdependence to actors outside the sphere of their influence, and the need to engage with stakeholders to manage interdependencies has been acknowledged as an important element in MC governance (Andrews, 2024; Andrews and Beynon, 2017). The relationship between decision-makers, officials, politicians, commercial partners and citizens becomes a topic of interest as informal governance is found to be more important for success of MCs (Green, 2024). Despite these advancements, there remains a gap in theoretical frameworks capable of fully capturing the dynamic, evolving nature of governance and accountability as ongoing processes shaped by negotiation and interaction across multiple levels. As Grossi et al. (2024) argue, there is a growing need to investigate how these different levels interact and influence each other in practice and to complement the field by drawing from other disciplines (Grossi et al., 2015; Torsteinsen, 2019). While institutional theory and network governance have advanced our understanding of MCs, they tend to emphasize relatively stable patterns, formalized structures, or stable logics. However, this focus risks overlooking important aspects, such as how compensation arrangements for private sector partners or the loss of municipal competence after re-municipalization (Grossi and Reichard, 2016) are not necessarily outcomes of institutional forces, but often stem from the structural set-up of service provision. Moreover, grassroots initiatives, such as “Initiative 136” in Greece (Tsekos and Trantafyllopoulou, 2016), illustrate that voluntary citizen actions and their interaction with municipalities, rather than institutional pressures, can drive organizational change. The complex and gradual processes of hybridization observed in practice cannot be understood as a result of institutional shocks or big changes (Wollmann et al., 2010), but rather they are contingent and context-dependent, suggesting that municipalities are heterogeneous and context dependent in their decision-making, often taking a pragmatic approach (Lobao et al., 2014). These decisions often have formal and informal aspects, rely on dialog and (re)negotiations, making it hard to establish stable accountability structures or to fully align governance mechanisms with predefined institutional models (Grossi and Thomasson, 2015).

In light of the issues discussed above, this paper proposes utilizing the works of Strauss on negotiated order, arenas and social worlds (1964, 1978, 1991) as an alternative lens for analyzing the governance and accountability dynamics in MCs and contribute to the calls for further theorization in the field (Maine, 2025). Stemming from sociology and rooted in symbolic interactionism, this approach, henceforth the Straussian package, offers a dynamic lens for examining how governance and accountability are continually shaped through interactions and negotiations between individuals, groups, corporations, and broader organizational fields. Rather than assuming stability, the Straussian package foregrounds how order emerges — and sometimes unravels — through ongoing negotiations among interdependent actors. To that end, this paper proposes the Straussian package to analyze the multi-level governance and accountability dynamics within MCs, complementing and extending the literature by highlighting how governance and accountability in MCs are continuously co-constructed through negotiation processes occurring across multiple social worlds and arenas.

After this introduction a short section that details the fundamentals of the Straussian package is provided, followed by a discussion on how it might be used to investigate accountability and governance issues related to MCs by discussing a historical public waterworks case that illustrates dynamics relevant to MCs. The paper closes with a critical assessment of the package and suggestions for future research.

As previously mentioned, understanding the governance and accountability issues within MCs requires an analysis that considers various levels of interaction. To address these complexities, the works of Strauss offer a valuable framework for investigating the negotiation dynamics at play in MCs. By integrating the concepts of negotiated order, social worlds, and arenas, this framework provides a more dynamic and adaptable tool for analyzing governance and accountability in MCs. Aligning interests, arranging resource allocations, and creating new structures are often necessary for MCs to function effectively (Maine, 2025). As hybrid entities serving both economic and social needs, MCs must navigate and account for a broad spectrum of demands, often shaped by politics and diverging institutional logics (Capalbo et al., 2021). Their functioning is also closely tied to contextual factors such as the financial health of the municipality, levels of autonomy, and the size and administrative capacity of local government (Camões and Rodrigues, 2021). Consequently, MCs operate in porous, dynamic environments that necessitate both responsiveness and adaptability.

As literature suggests, MCs operate within diverging institutional logics, political structures, and necessitate stakeholder involvement (e.g. Maine, 2025; Grossi and Thomasson, 2015; Argento et al., 2016). This highlights that to understand MCs, it is not enough to focus on institutional factors, organizational structures or actors as standalone factors but to consider them holistically. As MCs increasingly engage with external actors and face pressure to innovate and reform, their need for organizational flexibility and inter-organizational cooperation grows (Smith, 2014). These conditions also introduce new accountability and governance challenges, particularly as diverse stakeholders bring multiple, and sometimes conflicting, expectations to the fore. In this context, plurality becomes a central feature of governance, and negotiation emerges as a key mechanism for balancing competing interests and values (Gray et al., 2014).

Straussian package bridges the gap between structural constraints and the agency of actors, offering a richer understanding of how governance practices emerge, evolve, and adapt over time. This is particularly relevant in MCs, where formal governance structures coexist with informal processes shaped by the diverse backgrounds, interests, and affiliations of board members, managers, and stakeholders. Yet negotiation is far from a neutral or problem-free process. It is shaped by power asymmetries and institutional structures that often work to preserve the status quo, limiting the effect of participatory processes (Brown et al., 2015). Even within collaborative or network-based governance arrangements, where cooperation is promoted, power imbalances remain, with governments and other dominant actors often retaining influence (van Duijn et al., 2021). Moreover, how actors conceptualize their responsibilities toward a diverse set of constituencies has significant implications for how accountability is enacted in practice (Baudot et al., 2022)—a dynamic that becomes particularly salient when viewed through the lens of overlapping social worlds and negotiated arenas of the Straussian package.

Straussian sociology views the world as an arena of ongoing interactions where order is constantly negotiated and renegotiated. Rather than treating social structures as static or fixed, Strauss’s approach emphasizes the fluid, evolving nature of social relations. Social reality, from this perspective, is the product of collective action, constructed through negotiation, conflict, and collaboration between individuals and groups. In this context, organizations, actors, and institutions are shaped by continuous processes of negotiation, which define both roles and relationships. This dynamic approach aligns well with the multifaceted and shifting nature of governance challenges in MCs, where different interests, power structures, and social contexts interact. As a result, exploring interactions among the involved actors to deal with accountability and governance challenges of MCs becomes an important aspect (Ebrahim et al., 2014; Grossi et al., 2021). In this light, the Straussian package offers a compelling analytical lens for understanding how accountability and governance in MCs are not merely administratively implemented but are continuously negotiated. These negotiations unfold across multiple levels and arenas, shaped by shifting institutional contexts, contested meanings, power-laden relationships, and the social memberships of those involved.

Negotiated order theory, a central concept in Strauss’s work, posits that social order emerges from negotiations between actors. In his early research, Strauss and his colleagues observed that team members developed their “line of action” relative to the group as a whole, indicating that social order was a negotiated outcome (Strauss et al., 1964). Put differently, individuals within a social group or team negotiate their roles, behaviors, and actions based on the dynamics of the group. Through negotiating their positions and contributions in relation to the collective goals and dynamics of the group, they (re)create the structure of social order as a result of these ongoing negotiations. This perspective is particularly relevant for analyzing MCs, as it highlights the processes of negotiation, persuasion, and bargaining among different parties. Institutional rules and norms are not merely imposed but are products of past negotiations, suggesting that they can be renegotiated as circumstances shift (Strauss, 1978; Modell, 2006). As Strauss (1993, p. 226) notes, “issues are debated, negotiated, fought out, forced, and manipulated” by representatives of the participants, creating a dynamic social order that can adapt to new challenges.

Negotiated order theory integrates both structural and actor-based elements, recognizing that while structure constrains agency, agents retain the ability to influence it. This interplay between agency and structure focuses more on the immediate negotiation context. The structural context encompasses the taken-for-granted, the non-negotiable, the history, and tradition, which limit what can be negotiated (Busch, 1982; Hall and Spencer-Hall, 1982; Strauss, 1978). Conversely, the negotiation context includes factors such as the number and experience of negotiators, power imbalances, goals, and the complexity of issues, all of which shape the outcomes of negotiations (Strauss, 1978). This focus on actors and their interactions offers a more realistic depiction of the organizational environment, addressing gaps in traditional approaches where these elements are underexplored.

To address the limitations of static portrayals of relationships and the lack of emphasis on ongoing negotiation, the concepts of social worlds and arenas from negotiated order theory provide a necessary framework for understanding the fluidity and complexity of interactions. Actors within stakeholder relationships are not isolated entities; they are members of multiple social worlds, which Mead (1938, cited in Clarke (1991), p. 130) describes as “universes of discourse.” These social worlds are dynamic, allowing actors to hold changing memberships across various groups and subworlds simultaneously. For instance, consider a civil servant, who is not only a member of the MC but also part of a professional association for city planners and an advocacy group for environmental sustainability. Each of these “social worlds” has its own norms, goals, and values, influencing how the manager approaches decision-making and governance. As Soeffner (1991, p. 363) states, they are “groups with shared commitments to certain activities, sharing resources of many kinds to achieve their goals, and building shared ideologies about how to go about building their business.” This characteristic addresses the criticism that traditional analyses often fail to account for the diverse, evolving commitments of actors. As Strauss (1993, p. 228) notes, even if organizations play a substantial role, “Organizations are composed of members from different social worlds or social subworlds.” Decision-makers or board members then must navigate their roles in the MC, their obligations to governmental oversight bodies, and their affiliations with external interest groups, such as labor unions or environmental agencies when making decisions. Thus, the complexity of representation within these organizations necessitates an understanding of how various actors perceive their roles and responsibilities.

The negotiations among these actors occur within arenas, which Clarke (1991, p. 128) defines as “a field of action and interaction among a potentially wide variety of collective entities.” In contrast to more static representations of relationships, arenas highlight how interactions are not only bi-directional but involve multiple parties negotiating, clashing, and manipulating one another in real-time. With arenas based on issues, the analysis of actor dynamics shifts from a firm-specific one to an issue-based one. Arenas are spaces of contention where negotiations play out, and social orders are established, maintained, or challenged. This perspective captures the temporal nature of social order, emphasizing that relationships among stakeholders and MCs are continually renegotiated as conditions and power dynamics evolve. It facilitates not only the examination of governance as an ongoing process but also shifts the analytical focus from hierarchical relationships to the arenas in which key governance issues are contested and negotiated. This approach allows for a deeper exploration of interdependencies, cross-sector collaboration, and the competing logics at play within MCs.

This paper adopts a theory-driven, illustrative approach to explore accountability and governance challenges in MCs. Rather than presenting a formal case study, it mobilizes a historical example that sheds light on dynamics characteristic of MCs to illustrate how the Straussian package can be used to interpret and unpack complex dynamics in hybrid public organizations. To that extent, this paper adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach, grounded in abductive reasoning.

The Straussian package is best understood as a theory/methods package (Star, 1989; Clarke and Star, 2008), meaning that it encompasses both a philosophical orientation and a set of analytical tools and practices. Accordingly, the analysis proceeded abductively, through iterative movement between empirical materials and sensitizing concepts drawn from the Straussian tradition. Rather than following a fixed method, the material was selected and interpreted based on its theoretical relevance. The empirical material consists of a combination of primary sources (e.g. municipal reports, historical publications, and original writings of key actors) and secondary literature (e.g. biographies, historical analyses, and comparative accounts), chosen with an emphasis on tracing actor networks, structural conditions, and public narratives.

Following Clarke (1991), the analysis orients around four interrelated dimensions: (1) the structural conditions shaping the arena, (2) the actors and power structures involved, (3) their lines of work, and (4) their interactive processes. The analysis began by identifying a focal object: the First Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline. This historical project served as an entry point used to explore the broader governance arena concerning the provision of public water in 19th-century Vienna, an arena that shares features relevant to governance of hybrid public undertakings.

First, structural conditions were approached by examining economic and political factors of the period, as revealed through municipal reports and planning documents related to the waterworks (e.g. Suess, 1864). This situates the historical example within the wider public health and infrastructural concerns of the time. Second, actors and power structures were traced through attention to key figures such as Eduard Suess, whose writings (Suess, 1862, 1864, 1916) and later biographical treatments (e.g. Şengör, 2015; 2021; Hamilton, 2023) helped reconstruct his role and influence. This led to the identification of other influential individuals, such as Felder, whose background was explored through archival sources (e.g. von Wurzbach, 1890).

Third, the lines of work that constituted activity in the arena, e.g. the engineering, planning, political negotiation, and public health advocacy behind the waterworks, were reconstructed by tracing how pandemic threats and sanitary concerns became central to the discourse around water provision. This required expanding the scope of the analysis to include contemporary accounts and comparative materials from London (e.g. Alpha, 1831; Hempel, 2007), where similar debates were unfolding. Finally, the interactive processes among actors—how coalitions formed, decisions were justified emerged through synthesis of these diverse materials, highlighting how the governance of water provision was negotiated through situated, contingent alignments of expertise, politics, and public interest.

Reflexivity was maintained throughout the research process by critically examining how theoretical commitments influenced the framing of the problem, the selection of materials, and the interpretation of historical actors and events. For instance, decisions about which documents to pursue further were guided not only by availability but also by their relevance to concepts. This for example led to looking into Suess’ political leanings, as well as adding information about London when encountered in the report by Suess (1864) that compared water needs for Vienna to London, which resulted in a more nuanced understanding of the public health discourse that became apparent later on. A draft of the analysis was presented and discussed in an internal research seminar with researchers and one public servant of a municipality present. In addition to this study, a presentation was prepared that used other authors’ works that used various theories to highlight how the analysis would seem from the Straussian package. This seminar provided external feedback that helped challenge assumptions and clarify arguments. Additionally, reliance on multiple types of sources (primary and secondary, contemporary and retrospective) enabled a form of source data triangulation that strengthened the robustness of the narrative reconstruction.

This paper aims to propose the Straussian package to analyze MCs governance and accountability issues, with the underlying argument that the interplay of different levels (individual, meso, and macro) is sometimes not fully understood by other theories. In later years, the use of institutional theory and institutional logic has become popular to analyze MCs, which while providing interaction between levels, focuses mainly on investigating how micro issues are shaped by macro structures. In Argento et al. (2016) for example, the authors identified that there are 3 institutional logics that influence water works in Italy. In their analysis, business, compliance and community logics shape how the MC operates. But then, do these logics themselves cover the complexity of how MCs operate, specifically when logics “present different scripts and prescriptions for appropriate behaviour and performance, sometimes over-lapping, other times compartmentalised or conflictual” (Berge and Torsteinsen, 2023, p. 475). In this section, a historical case of water works will be used (complied from von Wurzbach, 1890; Gregory, 1914; Hobbs, 1914; Hempel, 2007; Plan et al., 2010; Stadt Wien, 2019; Suess, 1862, 1864, 1916; Şengör, 2015, 2021; OEAW, n.d.; Stadt Wien, n.d.; Vienna Tourist Board, n.d.; Hamilton, 2023) as an illustrative example to showcase how Straussian package could provide insights relevant to MCs’ governance and accountability. After a brief description of the setting, a narrative of salient incidents will be provided, followed by a more focused analysis to highlight the use of Straussian package.

The First Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline (Erste Wiener Hochquellenwasserleitung), constructed between 1870 and 1873, has recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, and is used here as a brief illustrative example.

Vienna faced severe health issues, such as typhoid and cholera outbreaks in the mid-19th century. These outbreaks were suspected to be linked to the poor quality of the water supply, with pipes mixing contaminated water with drinking water, similar to what was seen at other big cities around the world. A geologist named Professor Eduard Suess played a central role in identifying the root cause of these health crises. Known as the father of modern geology for his ideas on the supercontinent Gondwana and the Tethys Ocean, Suess also left a significant mark on Vienna through his work on the city’s water infrastructure.

Seuss conducted field trips and lectures focusing on the geology of Vienna and its surroundings. In 1858, he gave talks on the geology of Vienna with special regard to artesian wells, sparking his interest in the city’s water supply. In preparation for lectures to the Society of Physicians in 1861, Suess mapped out typhoid fever cases in Vienna. Seuss conducted a study mapping out the connection between deaths from diseases and the city’s water sources, similar to what was done in London at Broad Street to map out the cholera outbreaks. What Seuss found out is that due to Vienna’s topography, the close proximity of the city water supply situated downhill to cemeteries situated uphill made it possible for the wells to become contaminated, and that water should be sourced from afar. This resulted in his first book in 1862, about the topography of Vienna and its effect on citizens’ life. Suess’s geological mapping and comparison to the cholera outbreaks in London demonstrated the power of scientific reasoning in identifying the water-borne diseases and finding the solution. His geological book and public lectures increased awareness of Vienna’s geological conditions and their relation to public health.

When tasked to solve the water supply issue, Suess' initial idea—to bring water from the Alps, 110 km away—was considered insane by the conservative mayor Andreas Zelinka, who when discussing the project reportedly said, “You are a fool”, and project was shelved. However, when Zelinka died, his vice-mayor, Cajetan Felder, a progressive and a friend of Suess, became mayor. Together, they revived the idea and started to work to convince Emperor Franz Joseph I to donate the Kaiserbrunnen spring as the water source for Vienna in 1865. While the Ministry of Finance stopped the donation for reasons of indemnification, a later meeting with the emperor resulted in the spring to be donated for Vienna in 1867.

The project took five years to complete and was inaugurated in 1873, the same year that the Vienna World fair took place, marking a shift in public health in Vienna as the cholera outbreak of 1873 affected less of the population when compared with the previous outbreaks.

From a glance, it is possible to argue that there are several institutional logics that exist in this small historical case. Just like in Argento et al. (2016) it might be possible to find that there is a community logic (to serve the citizens of Vienna), a compliance logic and/or business logic (Ministry of Finance stopping the donation to ensure public finances are kept accordingly). It is also possible to discern that public health as a social good is a possible logic that also operates in this case. These logics, or the structural context in more Straussian terms, however, might not fully explain what happened in this case.

To start with, there is a certain issue, an arena, that binds all these actors together. Vienna faced severe health issues, such as typhoid and cholera outbreaks in the mid-19th century. These outbreaks were suspected to be linked to the poor quality of the water supply, with pipes mixing contaminated water with drinking water. Thus, in this arena of Viennese water supply, the negotiated order was broken and had to be negotiated. It is not just the municipality or the project that are in this arena; the arena covers the citizens, the inhabitants, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the emperor, among others. Some of those are not at close proximity, or are represented by organized stakeholders, or might not even enter into negotiations (such as citizens), however, as the decisions are made for the citizens, they are represented through politicians, governors, etc. meaning that they are a member of this arena, often names as implicated actors in Straussian package.

One solution offered was provided by Suess, who proposed a rather radical solution—bringing clean water from the Alps to Vienna, which was about 110 km away. This was based on his research into the geological structure of Vienna and the surrounding areas. He found that the best water source was a karstic spring in the Northern Calcareous Alps. Thus, he represented not just a citizen of Vienna, a council member, but a scientist with expert knowledge. His ideas were countered by council members, who were also citizens and members and individuals with expert knowledge in public governance.

While it is possible to argue that a clash of logics related to scientific rationality and political conservatism stopped the progress, it might not be enough to explain the story. The case involves not just scientists but political actors like Suess, Zelinka, Felder, and Emperor Franz Joseph I, each representing different power structures and interests. From a Straussian perspective, it is important to realize who these people are as they enter into the negotiations, thus the importance of the negotiation context. As can be seen in the case, most of these negotiations were ongoing, with the emperor donating the spring, being stopped, donating again, and so forth. Number of negotiators, power imbalances, goals, and the complexity of issues are parts of the negotiation context and should not be disregarded. As the pipeline is over 100 km long, the land around the pipe should be bought from the landowners, the water is supplied to Vienna, but the land doesn’t belong to just Vienna. Thus, different municipalities become involved with these negotiations.

The Vienna World Fair 1873 can also be considered as a piece of this negotiation context. Are Vienna and the Empire willing to invite representatives from the world to the capital, where there is a risk of cholera and typhoid fever, and risk their reputation? If not, it adds a level of urgency to the negotiations.

Also important to note is how a change in mayor leads to a change in acceptance of Seuss’ solution. While before the proposal was stopped due to financial constraint arguments, when Cajetan became the mayor, Suess’ proposal was accepted (Payer, 2023). Both mayors were lawyers, graduates of University of Vienna, have worked with municipality, thus familiar with the political climate of the time. One thing that diverges them is that Cajetan was also an entomologist thus open to scientific rationality. Another issue is the friendship that Seuss and Cajetan had. Perhaps another layer is that Seuss became a member of the Mittelpartei that was backed by Cajetan, which represented the liberal faction. This effect of politics was also reported later on while reporting on a monument of Suess, arguing how he was a liberal, different from his peers, by claiming that “How Sueß was laughed at when he wanted to provide sufficient water for all of Vienna and for every citizen, in sufficient quantities and for unlimited use! And this at a time when water could only be delivered to one’s home for a large sum of money, at a time when a house or piece of land connected to its own well was considered a strong source of income for its owner—in short, at a time when water was private property” Arbeiter-Zeitung, 1928, p. 8).

These interpersonal connections are issues that are considered when negotiating. Regardless of the situation, having an idea of these kinds of connections, be it perhaps on the more hidden level of having scientific/rational minds or more openly belonging to the same party, are factors that bear upon how the negotiations take place. Felder, as mayor, acted as a mediator between the city’s needs and the emperor, facilitating a negotiation that led to Franz Joseph I donating the spring for public use, highlighting how informal negotiations between personal relationships shaped the project. The city of Vienna, with more considerable power than other cities, then became favored through the donation of a spring, with help from the Ministry of War to supply engineers to help the project. However, Suess (1916) also notes how, for example Felder argued for Vienna to be kept out of war against the emperor during the war, and how as part of Danube basin, Vienna had to be considered as part of defense in line with Emperor’s wishes, creating potential discord among the parties.

The negotiation processes between different actors with distinct interests and expertise, such as Suess, the city council, and the emperor tie to governance issues. The governance structure in this instance was not limited to formal political institutions but included informal negotiations across scientific, municipal, and imperial domains. Decisions were shaped by the interplay of these actors, with the mayor acting as a mediator between local and imperial interests, illustrating the complexity of multi-level governance. The project exemplifies how governance is not just about compliance with formal rules but also about managing power dynamics, leveraging personal relationships, and incorporating expert knowledge into public decisions, a core insight from the Straussian framework. The shift in leadership from Mayor Zelinka to Mayor Felder demonstrates how changes in governance can open new pathways for decision-making and innovation even if the organization is separate from the municipality/city. A similar issue is apparent when Suess notes that an unnamed person offered him a bribe to not publish his report, and how he was not able to tell others about this as it might lead to a breakdown of the council, highlighting power structures that often are unseen (Suess, 1916, p. 156).

The First Spring Pipeline Project emerged through a series of negotiated interactions between actors from scientific communities, political actors, monarchy, citizens and inhabitants. The subsequent waterworks and the enduring reputation of Vienna’s water quality can be seen as a (negotiated) order resulting from continuous negotiation, adaptation, and the intersection of scientific discovery and political will. And through these negotiations to create an order, one can see how different accountability issues emerged. Suess, for example, declared when discussing the issue with Zelinka that “Nothing is more important than health”. This is rather different than what happened in London some years ago, where the dramatic increase in numbers applying for poor relief after the various fever episodes (due to increase in orphans and widows) contributed chiefly to investigating how to solve the problems (PP, 1834, 1842). Interestingly enough, while Suess who used science and health discourses in his book (1862), used monetary terms to showcase the grandeur and argue that there are few viable options for long-term success in his report to the commission (1964), whereas Die Presse (1865) highlighted the need for hygienic needs for the growing city when discussing waterworks as a duty to the city, showing different social worlds interacting within the arena.

Similarly, the situation was rather different than in London, providing a different negotiation context. Germ theory based spread of cholera was starting to be tentatively accepted by William Farr working in General Register Office only by the 1866 cholera outbreak, whereas previous outbreaks were investigated by the miasmic theories of diseases even though Snow has postulated the reason of cholera to be water-borne in 1849 (Eyler, 1973). While Lancet reported the oncoming cholera in 1831 for the UK and raising alarm for London (Alpha, 1831), there were already outbreaks in Vienna and Hamburg before the London outbreak of 1831 (Hempel, 2007), with Danube overflowing in 1831 speeding up the building of sewer systems in Vienna to stop a repeat of the spread of the disease (Weigl, 2020). These earlier outbreaks in Vienna and Hamburg, coupled with infrastructural responses like the accelerated sewer construction following the Danube overflow in 1831, may have contributed to a deeper awareness of cholera’s transmission by the time Suess began his work. This temporal and contextual difference likely provided Suess with more time and emerging knowledge to inform his approach, contrasting with the slower acceptance of germ theory in London.

He became accountable to the citizens of Vienna in his role as a council member and then as an Honorary Burgess of Vienna, but also to scientific standards, making his case for a long-term solution based on empirical evidence. The emperor’s eventual donation of the water source, under pressure from both the city and the broader geopolitical context (e.g. the Vienna World Fair), reveals dual accountability: to the citizens of Vienna and to the reputation of the empire. Furthermore, the Ministry of Finance’s intervention to halt the donation initially points to a fiscal accountability framework, ensuring public resources were safeguarded. These accountability issues are reflected as the waterwork project is then given the task of ensuring public health, demonstrating fiscal responsibility, and providing transparency in its dealings with both citizens and higher levels of government. The negotiation context, as highlighted in Straussian analysis, is key to understanding how accountability was continuously constructed and reconstructed, as actors sought to balance competing demands—scientific, financial, and political—in a waterworks project.

This section offers a brief interpretive reading of the Vienna Waterworks case to illustrate how the Straussian package sheds light on key accountability and governance issues.

The Vienna case begins with a breakdown in the city’s water infrastructure, a crisis that marks a clear disruption of the existing order. In the mid-19th century, cholera and typhoid outbreaks exposed the failures of Vienna’s public health infrastructure, triggering widespread public concern. From a Straussian perspective, this breakdown represents more than just a technical failure; it is a disruption of the tacit agreements and expectations that had previously underpinned governance. It also called into question who was accountable for safeguarding public health and infrastructure, a central issue that would influence later negotiations. The municipal government, the general public, imperial authorities, and scientific experts all found themselves in a new arena, where traditional roles and responsibilities were questioned and renegotiated.

This disruption created the conditions for a broader reevaluation of governance practices. The negotiation process was not confined to the waterworks alone; it expanded to include a diverse array of actors with conflicting or overlapping interests. The involvement of citizens, whose voices were often mediated through political structures, reinforced the idea that governance operates within arenas shaped by both direct and indirect negotiations. In this context, the failure of the water infrastructure did not simply highlight a technical need for repair—it signaled the need for a broader renegotiation of how governance could and should be organized, reinforcing the idea that governance is an ongoing, negotiated process.

In this (re)negotiating of the order, individual actors like Suess played a crucial role in reframing the issues through the lens of expert knowledge. Suess, a geologist by training, did not merely offer scientific expertise in an abstract sense; his knowledge was deeply embedded in the specific social, political, and topographical context of Vienna. His mapping of the cholera outbreaks and identification of water contamination parallels similar work in other cities (such as John Snow’s work in London), but it was Suess’s ability to frame the problem in a way that resonated with Vienna’s political elite that marked a turning point in the negotiation process.

From a Straussian perspective, Suess’s authority is not taken as automatic. His expertise had to be negotiated into the governance process. Undergo a process of validation and negotiation before it can influence governance decisions. His proposal for sourcing water from the Alps, although grounded in scientific evidence, faced opposition and could not be implemented until a series of negotiations took place across multiple institutional and political arenas. This illustrates the ongoing nature of negotiation in governance: knowledge itself is contingent and must be embedded in the political context through continuous dialog and negotiation.

Power dynamics played a pivotal role in shaping the trajectory of the project. The rejection of Suess’s proposal by Mayor Zelinka saying “You are a fool” (Hamilton, 2023, p. 288) illustrates how gatekeepers within the political system can block innovation, even in the face of compelling evidence. However, the power dynamics shifted when Suess’s ally, Cajetan Felder, assumed the mayorship and revived the pipeline project. This shift in political leadership shows how governance is not a linear process but one shaped by changing alliances and the relative power of different actors.

The involvement of the emperor, who initially blocked the donation of the spring and later enabled it, further illustrates how external power structures influenced the negotiation process. The emperor’s shifting stance highlights the contingency of governance orders—their fluidity, depending on the negotiation processes that involve multiple actors with varying levels of power and influence. It also illustrates how accountability is distributed across shifting constellations (i.e. imperial, municipal, and professional) and how responsibility can be deferred, contested, or re-attributed during such negotiations. They emerge and evolve through a complex interplay of political power, expert knowledge, and shifting alliances, all of which are negotiated over time.

The illustration above draws on a historical case to demonstrate how the Straussian package helps elucidate governance and accountability in MCs. While the Vienna case is over 150 years old, it illustrates the relevance of negotiated order to explore governance and accountability issues relevant for MCs.

The value of the Straussian package lies in its ability to capture the contingent, negotiated, and evolving nature of governance and accountability, features that are often underdeveloped in more structural or normative approaches. While literature on MCs has increasingly recognized not only institutional logics but also the significance of individual agency and embeddedness (e.g. Olsen et al., 2017; Hallett and Hawbaker, 2021; Rajala and Kokko, 2022; Maine et al., 2024), the Straussian package adds to this literature by adding a more dynamic, actor-sensitive dimension.

Individual behaviors and organizational practices matter as they bear upon the negotiation context. Institutional theory and institutional logics provided considerable contributions to the analysis of MCs (e.g. Argento et al., 2016; Berge and Torsteinsen, 2023), and while institutional approaches have evolved to acknowledge individual agency and contextual factors, they often emphasize structural influences over the nuances of local negotiations. In contrast, the Straussian package delves deeply into the specific negotiation contexts in which actors operate, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how governance and accountability are constructed through ongoing interactions. By keeping both the structural and negotiation context at the forefront, the analysis starts from an issue, an arena where parties need to negotiate. The unwritten rules and norms are part of the structural context, but so are the power dynamics between actors. Citizens, for example, are often only represented via elected officials, whereas organized stakeholders are more likely to be present at the negotiations, creating different possibilities to interact for different actors. While actors are often portrayed as carriers of multiple institutional logics (Thornton et al., 2012; Pache and Santos, 2013), this framing risks reifying logic categories and downplaying the situated, ongoing, and negotiated nature of organizational life. Drawing on the Straussian negotiated order tradition (Strauss et al., 1963; Maines, 1977), a shift from logic multiplicity to interactional multiplicity where order is not inherited but continuously shaped and reshaped through negotiation can be achieved.

Straussian package has a focus on temporality, assuming that order is temporally bound, which can also be traced in issues around accountability. The case shows that what counts as legitimate governance, or responsible action, is always provisional. Initially, water access was often seen as a privilege, with minimal forms of accountability. As cholera outbreaks and international visibility intensified, political forms of accountability emerged accountability was framed in terms of public health – experts were responsible for delivering safe water. As Suess took on official roles, costs of the projects started to become an issue to be addressed vis-à-vis public health. With imperial actors stepping in to ensure not just technical adequacy but reputational credibility, involvement of international workforce and technology resulted in multiple actors being accountable for multiple issues. Eventually, accountability became institutionalized through new municipal bodies and legal arrangements, formalizing responsibilities and creating new arenas for scrutiny. These shifts show that accountability was not a fixed structure but a moving target, negotiated in response to crises, alliances, and emerging expectations. The actor constellations evolved accordingly, revealing governance as a process shaped by contingency and negotiation — not just institutional design or path dependence.

Issues that MCs deal with often involve “defining a complex set of objectives that reflects the complexity of the policy problems,” which necessitates actors to “interact through negotiations that possibly combine hard-nosed bargaining with consensus-seeking deliberation” (Sorensen and Torfing, 2009, pp. 239–240). The Straussian package, with its focus on actors and negotiations, aligns well with the idea that “resource distribution and rules are gradually shaped in interaction” (Klijn and Koppenjan, 2000, p. 139). The Straussian package highlights how individual actors, through negotiation and interpersonal relationships, shape accountability and governance in complex settings. This lens underscores the dynamic nature of power, revealing how leaders like Eduard Suess navigated political landscapes to advance infrastructural projects. In this case, shifts in leadership, such as the appointment of Suess’s ally as mayor, facilitated negotiations that had previously stalled. These interpersonal connections expanded the scope of accountability, intertwining personal, professional, and political obligations.

As the project progressed, accountability extended beyond legal and fiscal responsibilities. The involvement of external actors, like the Belgian construction company Gambier, introduced new layers of scrutiny tied to project delays caused by external factors, such as the Prusso-Russian war. Suess (1916) notes how, for example Felder argued for Vienna to be kept out of war against the Emperor, and how as part of Danube basin, Vienna had to be considered as part of defense in line with Emperor’s wishes, creating potential discord within the parties. This diversification of actors shifted the locus of accountability, reflecting the evolving influence of scientific expertise, political affiliations, and international partnerships.

This suggests that there is a fluidity of power relations within the continuous negotiation processes that shape governance outcomes. Individual and collective incentives play a role in MC governance (Tavares, 2017; Bel and Fageda, 2007). What the Straussian package contributes is a focus on negotiated order, highlighting how different actors navigate competing demands and interests within a given arena. This provides a richer analysis of the dynamic nature of governance in MCs. The emphasis on negotiation allows for a more accurate depiction of the complexities involved in decision-making, which is particularly important when multiple stakeholders, belonging to multiple social worlds, are engaged.

The package also allows non-actors, such as the World’s Fair in 1873 to be considered as a salient component for analysis. The Fair created urgency for the parties involved in the water works, bearing upon the negotiation context as an outbreak would diminish the reputation of the Empire and Vienna. The rise of pandemics forced the actors involved in the waterworks to renegotiate their earlier agreements, which had previously focused on using filtered Danube water. The rising incidence of typhoid fever highlighted the inadequacies of these arrangements and the temporal nature of governance solutions, necessitating a reevaluation and renegotiation of the water supply system in response to new challenges and changing realities of city life in Vienna and the need to renegotiate based on new findings and ideas and realities of city life in Vienna.

The election of figures like Suess and Felder to parliament further complicated this accountability matrix, broadening their obligations to include parliamentary oversight and public interests. While the precise mechanisms of this expanded accountability may not be fully documented, the case illustrates how individual agency and negotiation create overlapping spheres of responsibility, reinforcing the importance of examining governance through a Straussian lens.

While a historical case was used to illustrate the Straussian package, the framework is equally well-suited to analyzing contemporary developments in MCs. Global and national shifts continue to reshape the negotiation context in which MCs operate. For example, geopolitical measures—such as tariffs and procurement restrictions—can force MCs to renegotiate trading relationships and governance priorities. These macro-level disruptions intersect with local constraints: Ryser et al. (2023) show how municipalities facing resource dependencies are compelled to adopt more entrepreneurial strategies, which themselves are subject to ongoing negotiation. In such contexts, new regulations or economic pressures do not simply impose compliance but trigger local reinterpretations and adjustments. The Straussian package offers a valuable framework for capturing how actors respond to such disruptions through situated negotiations.

The Straussian package can also be used to unpack how governance norms are maintained or disrupted through dynamic interpretations of role, loyalty, and institutional membership. A recent ruling by the Swedish Competition Agency requires municipalities to use formal bidding processes even when procuring services from their own corporations (Nilsson, 2024), disrupting previously stable routines. One plausible reason such procedures were not already in place may lie in how board members understood their roles. Bergh and Erlingsson (2023) show that board members often navigate conflicting loyalties between the municipality and the corporation. From a negotiated order perspective, these understandings emerge through participation in overlapping social worlds. If board members primarily identified as municipal agents, formal bidding might have seemed unnecessary or even inappropriate. This illustrates how governance practices in MCs are shaped not just by formal rules but by negotiated understandings situated within hybrid organizational contexts.

This paper set out to explore how the Straussian package, comprising negotiated order theory, the concept of social worlds and arenas, can be utilized as an valuable analytical framework for investigating governance and accountability issues in MCs. It did so by applying the framework to the historical case of the First Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline that displays several governance features that resonate with contemporary MC settings. Findings illustrate that governance and accountability are actively negotiated through ongoing interactions among and are a result of a fluid and collaborative process, shaped by shifting roles, loyalties, and alliances, as highlighted by the Straussian package.

MCs must constantly balance tensions between efficiency, political responsiveness, and public value creation (Grossi and Reichard, 2008). As hybrid organizations, they operate in institutional environments marked by competing objectives, overlapping principal-agent relationships, and evolving collaborations with both public and private actors (Van Thiel et al., 2019; Voorn et al., 2019; Garrone et al., 2013; Tavares and Camöes, 2007). These complexities make MCs fertile ground for research and call for frameworks capable of capturing their dynamic and evolving nature. This paper contributes conceptually to the growing literature on MCs by suggesting that governance and accountability are not simply institutional designs or managerial outcomes but are actively negotiated across multiple levels.

As Grossi et al. (2024) argue, governance and accountability in MCs are shaped at multiple levels. This paper illustrated how macro-level imperatives (e.g. securing safe public water), meso-level arrangements (e.g. financing and planning decisions), and micro-level interactions (e.g. negotiations among individuals) intertwine and co-evolve. Politicians, engineers, and citizens were not merely enacting predefined roles but actively negotiating them in response to overlapping institutional pressures and shifting conditions. These findings support the view that governance in MCs is not driven solely by top-down rules or party-political logic but is continuously (re)constructed through interactions across macro, meso, and micro arenas. In this sense, the Straussian package complements existing research on MCs (e.g. Berge and Torsteinsen, 2023; Argento et al., 2016; Grossi et al., 2024), while shifting the analytical lens from formal structures to the ongoing work of negotiating power, responsibility, and accountability.

MCs inherently contain tensions with issues related to loyalty, political control, and public accountability (Andrews et al., 2024; Van Thiel et al., 2019; Schillemans and Bovens, 2011; Bergh and Erlingsson, 2023), and tracing shifting allegiances and informal alliances is key to understanding the performance and legitimacy of MCs (Green, 2024). The Straussian package allowed the case to illustrate how actors moved between roles, as technical experts, municipal servants, or representatives of public interests, depending on the arena and the situation, highlighting the importance of the negotiation- and structural-contexts to shape governance outcomes and The context of negotiations that shape governance outcomes.

The analysis helps illustrate how accountability emerged from the negotiated relationships between various spheres of influence. For example, Suess’ role as a scientific expert, combined with Mayor Felder’s political strategies, illustrate how legitimacy and accountability were co-produced. These dynamic relationships underscore the need for a more fluid and adaptable approach to understanding governance in MCs that takes into consideration how different social worlds intersect to shape outcomes. The Straussian package, with its focus on negotiation, structural context, and arenas, highlights how accountability and governance are constructed not just through formal channels but through the interpersonal relationships, political maneuvering, and context-specific negotiations among involved actors.

Adopting the Straussian package underscores the importance of actively managing relationships and negotiations, beyond formalized structures. Public officials, MC managers, and other stakeholders should prioritize building and maintaining strategic alliances, recognizing that governance success hinges on the ability to continuously renegotiate terms, roles, and accountability, especially in response to evolving circumstances and external pressures.

Some limitations must be acknowledged. This paper presented a historical case, and the application of the Straussian package is illustrative rather than systematic. Moreover, while the framework emphasizes interaction and negotiation, it may underplay structural constraints in some contexts. Nevertheless, the approach offers valuable conceptual tools for capturing the fluidity of governance in hybrid organizations like MCs.

Several directions for future research could address these limitations. First, longitudinal and real-time studies of MCs could illuminate how governance arrangements are negotiated in practice. Events such as regulatory changes, public controversies, or leadership transitions offer valuable entry points for exploring the renegotiation of governance and accountability settings. This approach invites ethnographic, interview-based, or document analysis methods that trace negotiations over time, paying attention to language, symbolism, and relational dynamics, allowing scholars to follow governance in the making. By mapping the relevant social worlds surrounding an MC, how actors negotiate their roles, loyalties, and accountabilities within these spaces can be investigated.

Second, scholars could test the explanatory value of the Straussian package alongside other frameworks—such as institutional logics or collaborative governance theory—to assess complementarities and boundaries. Beyond conducting new studies, re-examining existing research (e.g. Argento et al., 2016; Baudot et al., 2022) through the lens of the Straussian package, where data permits, could offer fresh insights. Finally, future research could explore how actors actively construct or disrupt arenas, particularly during periods of crisis or reform, to provide more dynamic accounts of accountability and control.

This paper has benefited from the comments provided by participants at the GRIP Research Seminar held at Kristianstad University on 20 September 2024. Special thanks to Daniela Argento (Kristianstad University, Sweden) and Giuseppe Grossi (Kristianstad University, Sweden; Nord University, Norway) for their insightful feedback during the seminar. Thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and valuable feedback, which improved the paper. Generative AI (ChatGPT) has been used to copyedit this paper to improve its readability.

This paper forms part of a special section “Governance and accountability (Gover-nability) of multiple values of municipal corporations”, guest edited by Dr. Daniela Argento, Dr. Giuseppe Grossi, Assoc. Prof. Marieke van Genugten and Assoc. Prof. Anna Thomasson.